


Never Made It To Funland

by Sessaware



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon), steven universe future - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Hallucinating, Having an emotional crisis in the bathroom, I'm Sorry, One Shot, The boy whose powers are connected to his emotions bottles everything up and decides it's FINE, it's all in his head though, magical malfunction, mom issues, self worth issues, tagged for violence just to be sure, worrying about the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22022755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sessaware/pseuds/Sessaware
Summary: Stop the ride. Stop the ride.There's neon colour following him even with all the lights turned off. It bleeds into the tile grout, bright pink and sickening.---Steven spends a totally normal and not completely tortuous night in the bathroom, which is also a normal and healthy thing to do and definitely not a habit he's hiding like his life depends on it.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 144





	Never Made It To Funland

**Author's Note:**

> Prickly Pair was the straw to break the camel's back on me writing another extremely upsetting Steven Universe fic so here's our boy and he's not okay.

Stop the ride. Stop the ride.

It's dark outside the little window in the bathroom. He doesn't know what time it is but it's late or early and he's dizzy, dizzy, his head hurts.

Stop the ride, please, please, stop the ride.

There's neon colour following him even with all the lights turned off, he knows they're turned off there's no space between the shadows in the bathroom and the darkness outside the window. There's a chorus of cicadas outside the window. There's a crash of waves outside the window. 

He wishes he were outside the window. He's so unsteady he can't even stand. 

Just who's in charge here? Stop the ride, he wants to get off. 

He slips in an attempt to stand. He hits the floor again. The neon bleeds into the tile grout, bright pink and sickening.

The tile under his hands is numb and prickly, like he's touching it with dead limbs that refuse to regain circulation without a fight. The pink runs down the lines of the squares that spin and spin and scorch under his eyelids so he can't look away. 

Outside the window. Outside the window the cicadas song turns into screams. The waves turn into static. Both dig, dig into his ears, grind away at the drums like a physical force. He grits his teeth and his breathing comes in choppy, the pink spreading further and further, crawling in crossed rivers through the tiles and drip, drip, drip into the air vent near the door stop.

The sounds spread too, slicing into his brain to try and pull his skull apart. It's working, he can feel it working. It burns in his eyes and the neon runs down his face, down his neck, bubbles from where it has lodged in his throat. 

Just a thought. It had just been a thought.

Without anyone here. Nobody here.

He can't remember the tune Garnet sang, the melody Stevonnie followed. He can't even remember the feeling.

The pink slithers up the door, seals the gaps in the hinges and between the edges. It slides into the drain in the tub, clogs the sink and the faucet, the shower head and the toilet, all pink, pink, bright and horrible. 

Outside the window. The sounds cut off in a sudden silence that leaves him deaf. The pink leaks over the panes and locks that too until the room is no longer a room but a box.

The air is heavy. Stagnant. He feels like he's breathing in molasses and he can feel himself heave for breath through the pink in his lungs, drowning him in a sudden pneumonia that continues to seep from his lips, his eyes, his nose. He still can't hear it, though.

Stop the ride. The box continues to spin violently. His stomach heaves, he lurches forward but all that comes up is pink, pink, pink. It smears thick in globs on the tile, coats his numb hands until he can only feel a cold burn on his skin where sensation still lingers.

He tries to scream. It's what the pain demands. More pain than he can recall off hand, but it's exquisite, isn't it? Something he's nurtured slowly over time with just a thought and nobody, just a thought and nobody, just a thought and a thought and a thought. It burns like acid under his unfeeling skin, eats at his bones like rot, splits his head like an axe over and over. It's so perfect, he can't let go of it. He clings to it even as it drowns him in the pink he can't stand to see.

Pink is her. Pink is his mother. But this isn't her. The dead can't come back even if her actions haunt him and haunt him, a spectre that buries itself in his gut and keeps him alive, keeps him in torment, keeps him in her shadow and her neon stains.

The thousands of people she hurt and can never get justice or closure or restitution because she's gone.

The dead can't make amends.

Her loose ends remain loose and fluttering behind them all, catching on him, slowly unravelling. Making his own stitches fall apart. 

This pink is him. This pain is his. 

It's the weight of all she left behind, the weight of what he was to her.

A patsy. A consolation prize. A successful suicide. A son.

It's the sting of his own uncertainty as his path blurs out of focus, spins, like he's drunk, fades and breaks until there's no road at all. Everyone else has split off. Stop the ride. Just a thought and nobody. 

Why does he need to be needed? Just a thought and nobody.

Why did he push them away? Just a thought and nobody.

Of course there's nobody. Didn't he make sure of that?

His own mistakes join hands with hers. The neon spreads.

It's coated the walls, it's painting the ceiling. It's erased the tub and the sink and the toilet and everything else but him.

Why can't it just take him, too?

The dizziness persists even though there's nothing left to spin but pink, pink, all across his vision. The needles of a cactus sink slowly into his corneas. He tries to scream again but the silence stays, sits like a stone at the bottom of a lake. It hurts. It's perfect. It's intolerable.

He lays in the liquid colour as it continues to leak out of him, seep into his clothes and soak his hair. He's still. He's broken. He's been trying to ignore that for a long time now.

He's tired. He's angry. He's afraid. 

If it were anyone else, he would never begrudge them to feel what they need to. 

But that would just be gratification on his part. Another problem to solve that isn't his own.

Everyone else is happy, growing, looking forward. That's why what he feels is wrong.

How selfish is he to want others to suffer just so he can be the one they turn to? 

Just a thought. A butterfly that lances through him. A scream that dies in his throat with a gurgle. 

And nobody.

The ride doesn't stop. The thoughts race and circle, the same ones cutting through the same wounds they've already made, deeper and deeper as rosy hues make the space he's in smaller and smaller. 

The familiar pain is an old friend, a bitter enemy.

Please don't stop the ride.

Time loses meaning when the ride won't stop.

He doesn't want to get off.

Without the hurt, he cannot stand. It's laced into his spine, it's printed in his muscle. To lose it is to rip out everything in him and leave only a husk, a slough of skin that disgusts everyone who sees it.

Don't stop the ride.

It's the only thing about himself he can trust anymore.

The ride stops. The silence is shattered like inert glass squeezed in the fists of a corpse made of light and swallowed.

There's a knock at the bathroom door.

Steven blinks. Dawn spills in through the window, a dull gray and the call of seagulls squawking above the tide. He's on the tile floor, a bit of sand dry beneath his fingers, dragged in from the beach, as he lifts himself shakily onto his feet. There isn't a drop of pink to be seen. 

Someone is speaking to him from the other side of the door.

"Yeah, Pearl?" It's a strangers voice that comes out of him, unencumbered and easy. It sounds just like his own, so much that he thinks only he can tell the difference.

"I was just wondering if you wanted an omelette or a protein shake for breakfast this morning? Are you just getting in the shower?" She asks.

"Yeah, you just caught me," He lies, "Don't worry about breakfast, I'll fix something when I get out. You have that seminar planned this morning, right? I don't wanna make you late."

"Oh, Steven, don't worry about that! I've already prepared everything in advance and Little Home School is only a warp away!"

"All the same, I'm not quite hungry yet." He glances at his reflection. The only thing he can recognise anymore is the heavy bags under his eyes. Nothing a little concealer won't fix, "Thanks anyways, Pearl!"

"Alright," She says, tone unconvinced but yielding, "Amethyst has some GHEM appointments at nine and Garnet's already left for her Sunrise Yoga class, so you'll have the house to yourself again today. Is that alright?"

Is that alright? Why is she asking that? Does she know something's wrong? Does she know he's wrong? 

She does, of course she does, but we're all trying our best to ignore it, aren't we?

"Course that's alright! I've got some books on my reading list I was planning to tackle today, so the quiet will be nice!" He adds a little laugh at the end. Good. Convince her. Give her the permission she needs to disengage. She wants to disengage.

"Well, have fun! See you, Steven!" She says and he hears her dainty footsteps grow faint and only releases a breath when he hears the warp chime.

This pattern is established. For over a week now, Pearl or Amethyst or Garnet have caught him 'just getting into the shower'. For over a week he's been able to play off indulging in nightly hallucinations that come to him so much more easily than sleep. Whether they suspect or not, he doesn't know because at least they don't delve deeper. 

He looks in the mirror again, a proper appraisal. He jolts in surprise at the spot of red at his hairline. Leans closer to inspect it, prods it with a touch. It throbs. He'd hit his head earlier, hadn't he? It had been hard to tell what was real.

He sticks his finger in his mouth, presses the healing salve against the cut but nothing happens. Dread fills cold in his chest. His hand shakes as he reaches for the doorknob, hesitant to leave the prison he made his bathroom into. He pushes through it. If his healing stops working, he won't be able to help anyone. He'll lose the one thing left that grounds him.

There's a potted plant on his coffee table and he plucks a bloom only to press another saliva coated digit to the broken stem. New petals burst forward, a healthier flower than the one he'd taken. He sighs in relief. 

It's only himself he can't heal.

That much he's used to.


End file.
